[OpenIndiana-discuss] NMS software for snmp-based network monitoring that runs on OI? What's your favourite?

[Tim Mooney]

In regard to: [OpenIndiana-discuss] NMS software for snmp-based network...:

> What NMSes are you using, any that will run in OI?

OI has packages for Zabbix, which is what I would call a traditional
monitoring solution.  It can do both server-initiated monitors (polling)
and client-initiated monitors.  I don't know if the OI one is compiled
with SNMP support (that's optional), but you could find out quickly by
installing the package and then starting the service and looking in the
log file.

When I was evaluating monitoring solutions for work 4 years ago, I
actually ended up choosing Zabbix, and we've been using it ever since.
There were a few reasons why I chose it (at the time) over things like
Nagios, Xenoss Core, or Munin:

- Our Windows admins didn't have to edit Linux-based config files to set
   up new probes (items) or alerts (triggers) -- that can all be done
   through the web-based GUI.
- It has one supported and relatively decent web interface (rather than
   10 different, partially implemented ones -- I'm looking at you, Nagios)
- It has very good support for Windows (in addition to Linux & UNIX)
- The documentation was very good and the main docs covered everything
   I needed to do -- I didn't have to hunt through documentation scattered
   everywhere.
- Its templates were fairly powerful and mostly easy to use, so it was
   easy to set up e.g. a "base linux system in Datacenter X" template
   and apply it widely and get all the same basic probes, alerts, etc.
- Its API is easy to use and pretty complete.

One thing to keep in mind -- monitoring has changed a *lot* in the last
four years.  Packages like graphite had only rudimentary support for
alerting when I was doing my search 4 years ago.  Prometheus barely
existed 4 years ago.

Tim
-- 
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney at ndsu.edu
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